


are you lightning?

by firebreathing_bitchqueen



Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, i just really love them okay, pretty sure the only plot here is "more places the detective has made out with Nate"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26188186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebreathing_bitchqueen/pseuds/firebreathing_bitchqueen
Summary: Apparently, lightning can strike twice. Apparently, lightning can strike again and again.
Relationships: Female Detective/Nathaniel "Nate" Sewell
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	are you lightning?

_Apparently, lightning does strike twice._

_Apparently, lightning can strike again and again,_ Holland thought wryly, a breathless, impulsive giggle bubbling out of her as she pulled away from Nate to catch her breath. _And damn her human lungs_ , she thought, _for wasting so much time breathing when she could instead be kissing Nate._

“What are you laughing about?” He asked, reaching a hand up to curve a strand of hair behind her ear before ducking his head to press a soft, open-mouthed kiss on her jaw just below her earlobe.

Holland’s eyes fluttered shut as she exhaled. She smiled up at him as she opened them again, feeling slightly drunk and more than slightly giddy. 

“Nothing,” she shook her head, strands of pale blonde hair crashing against Nate’s face, still so close to hers. “It’s dumb.”

“So far, it seems like you and I tend to disagree on how often your thoughts are ‘dumb’,” he pointed out.

His eyes were so dark, and so warm, and so singularly focused on her it was almost unnerving. Okay, definitely unnerving. Holland wasn’t sure she’d ever had anyone pay her quite so much attention, and she definitely wasn’t sure what to do with all that focus. Even before they started dating – ever since he introduced himself in that first (well, _second_ , technically) meeting in her office all those months ago – he’d always seemed so interested in her.

Obviously as more than just a colleague, given how they were currently making out in her living room, not even pretending to watch the movie she’d ostensibly set up for them to watch.

But even before that spark of _interest,_ before any kind of real feeling, she’d always had the impression he genuinely didn’t mind, even wanted, her thoughts on the Murphy case, even though he knew, of course, that she hadn’t the foggiest idea of what was _actually_ going on with the string of seemingly random murders in Wayhaven.

 _You’re so different to the others on your team_ , she’d said to him that first day. Partly, of course, because he’d shown even minimal politeness. Although she had come to know and respect the other members of Unit Bravo since then – hell, she actually felt like they were becoming actual friends, even Mason, who felt so much like her mirror in so many unexpected ways – Nate was the only one who seemed actually interested in her as a person. Felix, of course, hadn’t been hostile (she wasn’t convinced he could be hostile), nor as dismissive as Adam and Mason, but he still had seemed more interested in her as…a novelty, maybe? And, in retrospect, obviously very amused at the various ways she had unintentionally come so close to unearthing the truth from which they’d been ordered to keep her.

But Nate just seemed to… _see_ her. She didn’t know how to explain it, although she’d tried several times to articulate the odd feeling of spotlight-visibility to Tina. Every time Nate looked at her, she felt like she’d been dropped on a massive stage in a packed auditorium, or like she’d just walked out of a movie in the middle of a summer afternoon: everything too bright and a little disorienting. 

“You don’t seem to find any of my thoughts dumb,” Holland countered softly.

“I’m so sorry to disappoint you,” he teased, briefly, gently pinching her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger, his hand still resting on the back of her neck, fingers brushing the downy sprigs of baby hairs along her nape as he released her ear.

“I don’t think you could,” Holland admitted without meaning to, words flying out of her brain like iron filings, powerless against Nate’s magnetic field. Every other part of her traitorous body seemed to be driven to distraction by him, she thought. Why should her mind be any different? Drawn in and held there somewhere in his orbit.

His smile lengthened, and his already warm dark eyes seemed to grow molten.

 _Like treacle_ , Holland thought. Which seemed absurd but also appropriate, since her brain certainly seemed to be caught in some sort of syrupy substance, slow-moving and vulnerable. Held here in his gentle gaze, who knew what thoughts and words were liable to fling themselves out of her head and into the space between them. A whole solar system of unplanned, unknown confessions pulled into Nate’s orbit. Magnetized by those eyes, and their warm, unwavering focus. Damn his attention. Damn his general…Nate-ness. She didn’t know what to do with in this situation. Not the making-out-with-your-boyfriend situation. Not even, to no one’s surprise more than her own, the making-out-with-your-boyfriend-who-is-also-functionally-immortal-because- ( _by the way_ ) he-is-a- _vampire_ situation. No, it was the accidentally-admitting-you-have-feelings-to-another-person situation. The having-conversations-that-felt-like-they- _mattered_ situation.

She felt equanimity about the wrong things. Finding out supernaturals were real? That they occupied the same time and space as you? That they wanted to _make out with you on your couch_?

Those were all reasonable things to lose your shit over. Holland was losing her shit over the wrong things. Twenty-eight-year-old, fully adult women, who paid rent and bills and were _gainfully employed detectives_ were capable of having equally adult conversations about their feelings with their adult boyfriends.

_(Even if their boyfriends had been adults for several centuries.)_

Especially when those feelings were embarrassingly benign. It wasn’t like she’d just declared her undying love for him (even though, technically, he was the only one of them who could actually make an “undying” declaration of anything). She hadn’t actually even said how much she really, really liked him in so many words. (Even though she really had nothing to be nervous about. He had, apparently, _not_ been uncomfortable admitting that he really liked her.)

Well.

 _In for a penny, in for a pound or whatever,_ she thought, letting more thoughts fly out of her mouth. “You’re just…um.”

_Jesus, fuck, Townsend. Get it together._

“You’re just better at this than I am,” she blurted, then cringed at herself. If she could just separate from her body and stop existing, that would be totally okay.

He quirked a brow but didn’t say anything, and she continued. “I mean, not, like…”

_Well, he’s clearly better at constructing complete sentences._

She exhaled an irritated breath and tried again. “Obviously better at talking,” she attempted a grin. Those dark, warm eyes were still on hers. Another situation she didn’t know how to handle.

She tilted her head forward until her forehead rested against his and let her eyes relax, his face going pleasantly out of focus. She probably looked ridiculously cross-eyed, but at least she could think.

“I am,” she started, “not very good at feeling.” Talking was easier when she could only kind of see his face. “I do too much of it. Or not enough. And I don’t trust it, I think. Or something.” She wrinkled her nose and let her eyes scrunch shut for a second. “Ugh, sorry, you are not my therapist. Please go back to kissing me so I stop talking,” she exhaled half of a laugh, pleased when it came out sounding light instead of uncomfortable.

The corners of his mouth twitched upwards and he tilted forward slightly, forehead still pressed against hers, to kiss the tip of her still-wrinkled nose. “Not that I’m opposed to kissing you every chance I get, but I like listening to you,” he said softly.

“Nate,” she breathed, his name in her mouth sounding more like a plea than she meant or expected. Which seemed to be par for the course with her this evening.

“Holland.” His voice was just as quiet and gentle as hers, but where hers had been tentative and wanting, his was steady, although perhaps no less wanting. Her name on his lips was arresting.

Everything about him was arresting.

That couldn’t be healthy, right? No one wants to be _arrested_.

She was a detective.

She should know.

Cardiac arrest, arrested development, house arrest…all bad things.

 _Although,_ an annoyingly hopeful little voice chirruped from the dustiest back shelves of her mind, _house arrest with Nate doesn’t sound awful._

Whoa, girl. Slow down. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, shall we?

Her traitorous heart sided with the hopeful part of her brain and ignored her – _again_ – when Nate brushed his mouth softly, sweetly

_(too damn briefly)_

against hers, pulling back just enough to murmur into her mouth.

“What are you thinking?”

 _Oh, you know,_ she almost said, rolling her lips together to keep the impulsive insanity contained, _just thinking I wouldn’t mind being under house arrest with you, because I’m insane and don’t know how to feel things on a scale that includes numbers between zero and one hundred. Like a normal person._

Instead, she bumped her nose against his. “How can I be expected to think while you’re doing that?”

He smiled, slow and soft, and she felt herself being drawn in, somehow, even further.

“Doing what?” he murmured, and she felt him smile against her mouth as he brushed his lips over hers once more.

Holland made a noise somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, although she managed to tamp down the urge to roll her eyes. “You know what,” she said, leaning forward when he pulled back and catching his bottom lip softly, briefly between her teeth.

When he groaned and leaned in to press his mouth more firmly against hers, she was the one, now, to pull back just far enough. She grinned at him, sweet and triumphant, sliding her hands down his arms and tangling her fingers in his. “You know exactly what,” she repeated.

“To which part are you referring, specifically?” The corners of his eyes, still distractingly warm and dark, crinkled slightly, the corners of his mouth twitching up in a gentle half-smile. Holland felt like her brain short-circuited every time he smiled at her. She still couldn’t decide if she was annoyed by how totally, completely charmed she was by him.

“ _Specifically_ ,” she said. “The part where you look at me like…like you’re looking at me.”

His eyes, still fixed on hers, glimmered, like he was trying not to look amused. “How exactly am I looking at you?”

“Like…like you are!” She fumbled. “With all this… _eye contact_! And with your _face_ , I mean, come _on_.”

Nate laughed then, a bubble of a chuckle, like he couldn’t help it. “Would you prefer I only talk to you with my eyes closed? Is that how you usually talk to other people?”

“Other people don’t look at me like you look at me,” she said softly.

“With their eyes open.”

“No! Don’t tease me, you know what I mean.”

“Do _you_ know what you mean?” He squeezed her hands, once, then drew both her hands up between them, dipping his head and dusting soft kisses along the ridge of her knuckles. “I can keep looking down, if you prefer,” he teased, and she felt the ghost of a grin against her fingers.

When she didn’t say anything after a beat, he looked up at her again. “I like listening to you, Holland,” he repeated, “And I like looking at you.”

She swallowed but held his gaze. Part of her instinctively wanted to look away, to shy away from the intensity of his focus, his eyes on hers. Part of her never wanted to look anywhere else. Every part of her was frozen in place, unable to look away, to be anywhere but drowning in his dark, warm eyes.

“I like looking at you, too,” she murmured, barely audible to her own ears. But, she reminded herself, probably perfectly audible to his.

“And,” she continued, telling herself to be brave, to let herself trust this feeling, this _something_ enough to follow it. “I like doing other things with you, too.”

She wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but Nate’s eyes grew even darker, still fixed on hers.

“Oh?” Somehow, his tone remained mild, even as _something_ simmered in his eyes. She wondered if it was reflected in her own. She was certainly not feeling anything close to _mild_ at present.

Because she didn’t fully trust herself to speak, Holland gave a hum of agreement, and felt his fingers, still curled around her hands, tighten.

She started to lean forward and he met her almost before she’d begun to move, his mouth falling against hers somehow both intently and gently at the same time.

Her lips were already parted, and her breath caught in her throat as he flicked his tongue against her bottom lip before sliding further into her mouth.

She disentangled one hand from his, still clasped between their bodies, and brought it up to cup his face, feeling the scratch of stubble under her palm, then against her cheek as he tilted his head, deepening the kiss.

Not for lack of trying, Holland still hadn’t gotten used to the sheer exuberance of kissing him, that bottled-lightning, first-kiss _magic_ feeling of Nate’s mouth on hers. The frisson of nerves and pleasure that danced along her spine every time he wove his fingers into her hair. Or brushed them down her sides, as he did now with the hand not still clutching hers, skimming gently, slowly, down her body, ghosting the side of her breast, her ribs, her waist before resting it on her hip, his thumb and forefinger slipping just past the hem of her tee shirt, warm against her bare skin.

She felt him smile slightly against her mouth when her breath hitched once more in her throat, and couldn’t suppress the half-giggle, half-sigh that, once again, slipped past her parted lips.

“Still not going to tell me what you’re laughing about, _schatje_?” he murmured against her lips, kissing each corner of her mouth gently, briefly, before pressing his mouth against the line of her jaw and then lower, a slow, purposeful descent along the column of her throat.

He’d taken to calling her that sporadically, a habit that still amused her while further endearing him to her at the same time. Because _of course_ he knew Dutch, among probably scores of other languages.

 _“You know I’m not actually Dutch, right? Just because Rebecca lost the coin toss and my father thought naming me after a country was a good idea,”_ she’d teased him, the first time he used the endearment. Although Holland didn’t actually speak Dutch, she’d guessed – and been right, to her absolute pleasure – that it meant _treasure_ , more or less, based on her much greater proficiency in German, which had a similar diminutive term of affection.

 _“I am aware you’re not Dutch, yes,”_ he’d smiled back at her, unruffled. _“It just seemed to fit you, I suppose.”_

 _“I don’t think I’m the rare one here, Nathaniel,”_ she’d tried – and failed – to look anything other than charmed.

_“Something does not have to be rare to be a treasure. You, however, are unequivocally both to me.”_

He’d been so earnest, she hadn’t known what to say, but she had – mostly – stopped teasing him about calling her _schatje_.

The faintest dull scrape of teeth along the crook of her neck brought back her wandering mind, and she inhaled slowly before she trusted herself to respond to his teasing question.

“Still assuming I can think while you’re doing _that_ ,” the last word was little more than a swallowed groan.

“I believe I relinquished your mouth for the moment,” he said to the hollow of her throat, and Holland felt his words resonate in her collarbone, his voice a low thrum of transferred energy that her body hadn’t found a place for.

“Very thoughtful of you,” she managed to breathe, sighing out another almost-laugh.

“I do try to be considerate.” He still had one of his hands tangled in hers, but the one at her hip had migrated; no longer teasing the hem of her tee shirt, his fingers had slipped fully beneath her top and were waltzing warmly along her spine.

“Mmm, considerate,” she mumbled agreeably. If you’d asked with what, specifically, she was agreeing, Holland wasn’t confident she could give a definitive answer.

“And distracting,” she amended, tipping her head further back and letting it rest against the arm of her couch.

 _Very distracting_ , she thought. She had no idea when they’d shifted from half-curled into each other (but decidedly upright) to here, Nate’s long frame half covering her smaller one, her knees – which she’d been certain she’d had twisted underneath her in some sort of “complicated pretzel”, as Tina always teased her – 

_(don’t think about Tina right now)_

had somehow ended up bracketing his hips, one foot curved against his calf, the other tucked into the sofa cushion crease.

He was still painting kisses along her collarbone when he lifted the hand still anchoring hers above her head, finally relinquishing her fingers and dragging his slowly down her arm to meet the hand trailing along her spine.

She stretched her newly unmoored fingers out to twist in his dark hair and drew his face back up to hers, kissing his mouth, each corner of his lips, his face. She couldn’t get enough of him, wanted to breathe him in, flood her senses entirely with Nate, Nate, --

“ – Nate,” she breathed the last echo of his name aloud, a whispered incantation along his gold-dust skin, and felt the shadow-warmth of her own breath curl like smoke between them, a ghost of the warmth coiling in her belly, heady and intoxicating.

Intoxicating. He’d said that about her once, about her blood, the scent of her. Insane that she might elicit such a response from him, that he might feel anything approaching what she felt for him. The thought was so ludicrous she almost laughed again, another reaction he seemed to draw from her with little effort.

She swallowed the impulse to laugh (this time) but not the smile, a brief twitch of a thing, but she knew he’d felt it just the same, from the way his hand tightened on her shin, pausing the slow trail his fingers had been stroking up her leg, from her ankle to the knee still slanted against his hip and back again.

“Still won’t tell me what’s on your mind, _schatje_?” he purred. His mouth was no more than a hairsbreadth from her ear, but she felt more than heard the rumble of his voice, its deep timbre humming in her bones.

“I’m afraid I haven’t got a penny to offer you,” he continued, pressing his mouth to the soft, thin skin just behind her earlobe, murmuring against her skin. “For your thoughts, I mean.”

His voice was gently teasing, but there was a rough edge of want feathering the edges that bewitched her.

“I’m not interested in your pennies, Nate.” His name on her lips felt like a prayer, a sacred, holy thing. If his voice is feathered with an edge of want, hers is a raw rasp, as though her throat has been sandpapered by the thirst of longing.

“Oh?” he breathed, somehow still managing to sound mild. “And what is it that interests you, then, Holland?”

His mouth was still on her skin, his breath fluttering the hairs he’d tucked back behind her ear, and the sound of his voice felt to Holland like a bellows, how it seemed to fan the wildfire coursing through her veins. She couldn’t decide if she needed more air or if an influx of oxygen would only further stoke the conflagration of her nerve-endings. She reached for his hand on her shin and dragged it up, up, up, along her thigh, to her hip, the waistband of her jeans.

“I think,” she breathed, releasing his hand and stretching hers forward to the warm plane of his chest, sliding it down along the soft cotton of his shirt. She needed to feel his skin. “You know the answer to that question already.”

They were already moving together, and for a moment she felt a pang of loss as he pulled back slightly from her, but the feeling passed almost before it began, as he gripped her hips, lifting her from beneath him and raising them both. He paused there, kneeling on her couch, and she tightened the hold of her legs, wrapping them more securely around his waist, then leaned in to kiss him again. She felt drunk off the taste of his mouth alone and caught his bottom lip between her teeth, sucking it into her mouth, as if she were drinking nectar from his lips.

“Nate,” she breathed again. Spellbound in that moment, she wasn’t convinced she remembered any word in any language except for his name.

As if he didn’t know he was the only thing on her mind.


End file.
